The first three weeks of Yosemite has been painful because Dragon Dictate has not been working properly. It would not read my old profiles and would not let me train a new one without crashing. I rely fairly heavily on Dragon Dictate to do most of my writing/typing so this was a bit of a dud. I was going to write a post on a workaround for this problem, but Nuance released an update today – version 4.0.6 – which fixes the problems. Training is working again and Dragon Dictate has stopped crashing.

Nuance should have had this all worked out before Yosemite was released, but at least we are back in business now.

I have just received a free version of Dragon Dictate version 4 to review. I installed it yesterday and first impressions are that it is slightly better than version 3 in recognition. This is surprising because I thought version 3 was so good that it would be hard to improve on. I’m putting it through it’s paces. Stay tuned because after I’ve used it for a week I’ll put out a review.

One of my favourite Apps is Dragon Dictate – it takes what I say and dictates it to the computer. The problem is that it costs $200. Last week Nuance released a new app called Dragon Express in the App store. A cut-down version of Dragon Dictate. I’ve never seen an app with worse reviews! Check this out:

I’m hesitant to fork out the $49.99 to try it out but I was wondering if anyone else had tried it?

STOP PRESS: Even though initially I wrote this great review, after using version 2.5 for a week I find that it often crashes when I try to use the correction window. There are a lot of complaints about this in the Dragon Dictate forums. I’d hold off till the next update comes along . Dragon Dictate 2.5 is quite unstable.

24th August 2011: Dragon Dictate 2.5.1 was released this week and all the stability problems seem to be fixed.

This month Macspeech have released a major upgrade of Macspeech Dictate and they have also renamed it to include the Dragon branding – Dragon Dictate. It’s the equivalent of Dragon Naturally Speaking version 11 on Windows.

I’ve only been using it for a couple of hours, but I can say it’s definitely an improvement on MacSpeech Dictate. Dragon have put their name on the product, which I assume means they’ve put out something that they’re finally happy with. I was happy with the last version, but this one is even better. Continue reading 〉

Nuance have just launched Dragon Dictate voice recognition software for the Mac. Anyone tried it out yet? It’s an upgrade of Macspeech Dictate but they have changed the name from Macspeech Dictate to Dragon Dictate. It’s powered by the dragon v11 engine.

Dictate 2.0 “learns” better than any previous version via training in the Recognition window, as well as through the Vocabulary Training feature.

Hopefully this means the problems I describe here regarding learning as you dictate have been addressed. It will be nice if it boots up straight away without having to manually select a profile… Let’s see – I’m just downloading an update now (1.2 GB – 1 hour to go!) so I’ll keep you updated after I install it… It requires OS X Snow Leopard or later. The full version at $199 is still dearer than Dragon Naturally Speaking for windows, but the upgrade from Macspeech Dictate was only $49 – quite reasonably priced.

I’m hoping the fact that they now have put their ‘Dragon’ name onto it means they have a Speech recognition product that rivals the PC version in all aspects.